head to head · open source
chatbox vs BotSharp
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars, 4,253 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. BotSharp has 3,104 stars, 651 forks, 48 open issues and last shipped today. chatbox leads on adoption by 1,247% (41,814 vs 3,104 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; BotSharp is written in C# under Apache-2.0. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, BotSharp 21%. BotSharp was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chatbot), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| chatbox | BotSharp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 651 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick chatbox if
- You weight community size — 42K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick BotSharp if
- You want the BotSharp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and BotSharp fits your workflow better
About chatbox
Chatbox (Community Edition) is a cross platform desktop client for large language models, written in TypeScript and released under the GPL 3.0 license. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and it connects to a range of providers including OpenAI (ChatGPT), Azure OpenAI, Claude, Google Gemini Pro, Ollama and ChatGLM 6B. The project lives in the AI interaction and interfaces ecosystem, where desktop chat front ends sit between a user and one or more hosted or locally hosted model APIs. The repository carries 41,767 stars and 4,251 forks across four years of history.
read the full chatbox overview →
About BotSharp
BotSharp is an open source AI multi agent framework for .NET that connects large language models to existing business applications, and it is aimed at C enterprise developers who want agent orchestration and conversation state to live inside their own information systems rather than in a separate stack.
read the full BotSharp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or BotSharp more popular?
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars and BotSharp has 3,104. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and BotSharp free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0 and BotSharp under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chatbox and BotSharp?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and BotSharp in C#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, chatbox or BotSharp?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (41,814 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose BotSharp if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.